Where those associated with Western films from around the world are laid to rest.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

RIP Martin Landau

Martin Landau, Oscar Winner for 'Ed Wood,' Dies at 89

The Hollywood Reporter

By Mike Barnes

7/16/2017

His résumé includes 'Mission: Impossible,' 'Tucker: The
Man and His Dream' and 'North by Northwest.' It does not, however, include
'Star Trek.'

Martin Landau, the all-purpose actor who showcased his
versatility as a master of disguise on the Mission: Impossible TV series and as
a broken-down Bela Lugosi in his Oscar-winning performance in Ed Wood, has
died. He was 89.

Landau, who shot to fame by playing a homosexual henchman
in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest, died Saturday of
"unexpected complications" after a brief stay at Ronald Reagan UCLA
Medical Center, his rep confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

After he quit CBS’ Mission: Impossible after three
seasons in 1969 because of a contract dispute, Landau’s career was on the rocks
until he was picked by Francis Ford Coppola to play Abe Karatz, the business
partner of visionary automaker Preston Tucker (Jeff Bridges), in Tucker: The
Man and His Dream (1988).

Landau received a best supporting actor nomination for
that performance, then backed it up the following year with another nom for
starring as Judah Rosenthal, an ophthalmologist who has his mistress (Angelica
Huston) killed, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).

Landau lost out on Oscar night to Kevin Kline and Denzel
Washington, respectively, in those years but finally prevailed for his
larger-than-life portrayal of horror-movie legend Lugosi in the biopic Ed Wood
(1994), directed by Tim Burton.

Landau also starred as Commander John Koenig on the 1970s
science-fiction series Space: 1999 opposite his Mission: Impossible co-star
Barbara Bain, his wife from 1957 until their divorce in 1993.

A former newspaper cartoonist, Landau turned down the
role of Mr. Spock on the NBC series Star Trek, which went to Leonard Nimoy (who
later effectively replaced Landau on Mission: Impossible after Trek was
canceled).

Landau also was an admired acting teacher who taught the
craft to the likes of Jack Nicholson. And in the 1950s, he was best friends
with James Dean and, for several months, the boyfriend of Marilyn Monroe. “She
could be wonderful, but she was incredibly insecure, to the point she could
drive you crazy,” he told The New York Times in 1988.

Landau was born in Brooklyn on June 20, 1928. At age 17,
he landed a job as a cartoonist for the New York Daily News, but he turned down
a promotion and quit five years later to pursue acting.

“It was an impulsive move on my part to do that,” Landau
told The Jewish Journal in 2013. “To become an actor was a dream I must’ve had
so deeply and so strongly because I left a lucrative, well-paying job that I
could do well to become an unemployed actor. It’s crazy if you think about it.
To this day, I can still hear my mother’s voice saying, ‘You did what?!’ ”

In 1955, he auditioned for Lee Strasberg at the Actors
Studio (choosing a scene from Clifford Odets’ Clash by Night against the advice
of friends), and he and Steve McQueen were the only new students accepted that
year out of the 2,000-plus aspirants who had applied.

With his dark hair and penetrating blue eyes, Landau
found success on New York stages in Goat Song, Stalag 17 and First Love.
Hitchcock caught his performance on opening night opposite Edward G. Robinson
in a road production of Middle of the Night, the first Broadway play written by
Paddy Chayefsky, and cast him as the killer Leonard in North by Northwest.

In Middle of the Night, “I played a very macho guy, 180
degrees from Leonard, who I chose to play as a homosexual — very subtly —
because he wanted to get rid of Eva Marie Saint with such a vengeance,” he
recalled in a 2012 interview.

As the ally of James Mason and nemesis of Saint and Cary
Grant, Landau plummets to his death off Mount Rushmore in the movie’s climactic
scene. With his slick, sinister gleam and calculating demeanor, he attracted
the notice of producers and directors.

He went on to perform for such top directors as Joseph L.
Mankiewicz in Cleopatra (1963) — though he said most of his best work on that
film was sent to the cutting-room floor — George Stevens in The Greatest Story
Ever Told (1965), John Sturges in The Hallelujah Trail (1965) and Henry
Hathaway in Nevada Smith (1966).

Landau met Bruce Geller, the eventual creator of Mission:
Impossible, when he invited the writer to an acting class. Bain was in the
class as well, and Geller wrote for them the parts of spies Rollin Hand and
Cinnamon Carter. Landau earned an Emmy nomination for each of his three seasons
on the series.

He could have starred in another series.

“I turned down Star Trek. It would’ve been torturous,” he
said during a 2011 edition of the PBS documentary series Pioneers of
Television. “I would’ve probably died playing that role. I mean, even the
thought of it now upsets me. It was the antithesis of why I became an actor. I
mean, to play a character that Lenny (Nimoy) was better suited for, frankly, a
guy who speaks in a monotone who never gets excited, never has any guilt, never
has any fear or was affected on a visceral level. Who wants to do that?”

Landau found a kindred spirit in Burton, who also cast
him in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and as the voice of a Vincent Price-like science
teacher in the horror-movie homage, Frankenweenie (2012).

“Tim and I don’t finish a sentence,” Landau told the Los
Angeles Times in 2012. “There’s something oddly kinesthetic about it. We kind
of understand each other.”

Landau played puppet master Geppetto in a pair of
Pinocchio films and appeared in other films including Pork Chop Hill (1959),
City Hall (1996), The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), Rounders (1998), Edtv
(1999), The Majestic (2001), Lovely, Still (2008) and Mysteria (2011).

On television, he starred in the Twilight Zone episodes
“Mr. Denton on Doomsday” and “The Jeopardy Room,” played the title role in the
1999 Showtime telefilm Bonnano: A Godfather’s Story and could be found on The
Untouchables, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Maverick, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Wagon Train,
I Spy and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

More recently, Landau earned Emmy noms for playing the
father of Anthony LaPaglia’s character on CBS’ Without a Trace and
guest-starring as an out-of-touch movie producer on HBO’s Entourage. He
portrayed billionaire J. Howard Marshall, the 90-year-old husband of Anna
Nicole Smith, in a 2013 Lifetime biopic about the sex symbol, and starred for
Atom Egoyan opposite Christopher Plummer in Remember (2015).

And Landau appeared opposite Paul Sorvino in The Last
Poker Game, which premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

Landau worked as director, teacher and executive director
at the Actors Studio West. He has been credited with helping to guide the
talents of Huston, Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton in addition to
Nicholson.

A documentary about his life, An Actor's Actor: The Life
of Martin Landau, is in the works.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.